Wednesday of Woe

Starwalker had spent very little time in space over the last few weeks. He had hoped to get some quality time in space and Wednesday turned out to be that opportunity. So, he undocked in his Merlin and headed out into Molden Heath.

The Rebels were chilling in Heild but he quickly moved on looking for prey as the number of Rebels in system seemed to have chased away any potential fights. Arriving on gate and jumping through Starwalker noticed an Executioner following, so on the other side he waited patiently. That patience was rewarded.

The Executioner pilot, prettyboyfloyde, locked up Starwalker's Merlin and engaged. More than that he came in close and Starwalker was surprised by that as he expected to be kited but a close up brawl was just what the Merlin was built for. Only the Executioner did not crumble as expected, it orbited around 2-4km away and laid down the hurt.

This Merlin was fit with Light Electron Blasters and they did not seem to be doing anything like enough damage and Starwalker was quickly cycling through his ancillary shield booster and then his armour repair. It did not help, the Executioner lived up to its name and the Merlin exploded.

Undeterred Starwalker got out his Caracal and again found himself in Heild but this time chasing around a Thrasher and Hawk. He actually wanted to fight a small gang of frigates to see how the XL-ASB Caracal would do against a small gang and a Thrasher and Hawk seemed like a good fight. However, before long the Hawk piloted by Nergalion warped away and Starwalker thought it might be a waste of time to continue to chase the Thrasher.

He stopped chasing the Thrasher and then saw a Hawk and Retribution come back in with a couple of other ships only 40km away. Starwalker aligned the Caracal towards them and started to move in... until he noticed that one of the other ships was a Kitsune. He decided it was time to bug out and aligned away but before he could leave he was scrambled by the Retribution. He returned fire but before long the Kitsune had him jammed. The fun level dropped to zero and the inevitable happened as the once proud Caracal became so much space wreckage.

This Wednesday had not quite turned out as hoped but it did highlight a few things:

• The Caracal capacitor was not good, a few seconds of burning around with the MWD depleted the capacitor very quickly
• Starwalker did not want to have to watch his capacitor so closely, he need to fly ships that were capacitor stable or at least could spend a few minutes flying around without worrying about the capacitor
• Favouring tank had reduced the firepower and potential damage projection for both the Merlin and Caracal. In the Caracal's case being jammed out was the most critical issue but for the Merlin the blaster damage at 4k was dramatically lower than at optimal range.
• The eternal question of choose more firepower or tank was still wonderfully relevant and Starwalker had still not made up his mind as to which he really favoured, perhaps he never would...